Thief 1/2 & SShock 2: DDFix and Enhanced Resolution Patch - discussion - by bikerdude
smithpd on 30/3/2008 at 22:16
Quote Posted by sNeaksieGarrett
Yeah, its curious that thief does not show 32, but I suppose the game has no way of telling....:confused: The thing is, I'm always wondering if it really is running in 32-bit, because i could not tell anything different with ddfix except for the obvious fixes, but I dunno if that is result of 32-bit or not.
If you have a good screen capture program and you zoom in to a captured texture, you will see that textures are rendered smoothly in 32 bit color using DDFIX, as opposed to dithering, which creates a dot pattern to simulate 32 bit colors with a 16 bit color palette. The problem with non-ddfix versions is that they must use dithering to get decent rendering. Dithering was broken entirely with recent Nvidia drivers and 8000 series cards, so the rendering was really crappy. Even if you have an ATI card, which works with 16 bit dithering, or are running T1, which never had a problem with it, you can see that the 32 bit rendering is smoother if you zoom up close to a captured texture, as opposed to walking up close. It is not necessarily obvious unless you own a recent Nvidia card.
As for the obvious fixes, like the sky, I think those were rendered differently from the standard textures, perhaps without dithering, perhaps with only 8-bit rendering. I am not sure about that. Anyway, the result is that this different rendering gave a really blotchy appearance using all Nvidia cards since 5xxx. The 32 bit rendering has resulted in much more obvious improvement in the sky and some particular textures.
EvaUnit02 on 31/3/2008 at 11:56
Quote Posted by deathshadow
Odd, it crashes hard for me if I try to set it higher than 1024x768 in cam.cfg, always has. - all the way back to when I was on a voodoo banshee, through a Radeon VE, Radeon 9500, Ge7600GT and what I'm running today, a Ge8800GTS... Always assumed that was why Thief 1/Gold only ever listed the three 'basic' resolutions (640,800,1024) as it's options in the menu - because one of the first things I ever tried with the game was setting non-standard resolutions in cam.cfg.
The resolution values in cam.cfg and ddfix.ini have to match.
Quote Posted by Prvt_Peanut
I installed the patch for premier version of the game and then followed the readme when manually configuring the ddfix. Now I simply can't start the game and i get the message "DirectX version 7 or higher not installed".
Anybody got any idea how I can bypass this? It must be an issue specifically for the premier version or something...
Download and install the latest (
http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/info.aspx?na=22&p=3&SrcDisplayLang=en&SrcCategoryId=2&SrcFamilyId=&u=%2fdownloads%2fdetails.aspx%3fFamilyID%3d740ac79a-5b72-447d-84f9-ee6407ed1a91%26DisplayLang%3den) DirectX redistributable.
DirectX is updated every 2-3 months, it's good to stay up-to-date. Updating to the latest DX redist should be one of your first ports of call when troubleshooting a game.
Prvt_Peanut on 31/3/2008 at 12:30
Still gives the same result, thanks for the help anyway.
i think i might end up having to buy thief 2 again or something :( (had to do the same thing with thief 3 when i cracked the disk ^^)
EvaUnit02 on 31/3/2008 at 13:13
Quote Posted by Prvt_Peanut
Still gives the same result, thanks for the help anyway.
i think i might end up having to buy thief 2 again or something :( (had to do the same thing with thief 3 when i cracked the disk ^^)
Have you tried different compatibility modes, ie Windows XP, Windows 98, etc?
deathshadow on 31/3/2008 at 14:34
Quote Posted by EvaUnit02
The resolution values in cam.cfg and ddfix.ini have to match.
Read post before responding - I was referring to vanilla without DDFIX, even under Win98 - hence the references to video cards like the Voodoo Banshee? I was commenting that people were claiming they had vanilla working at res higher than 1024x768 - something that's never worked for me and always crashed - HARD.
Oh, and sNeaksieGarrett - I said that, not Dan Knott.
Timeslip on 31/3/2008 at 19:55
Update on the 32 bit high res textures thing I said I was going to try: I've got it partially working, but thief handles all mipmaps manually and I haven't yet found a way of working out which surfaces are mipmaps of which textures, with the result that any overridden textures in the distance end up looking like garbage. :(
I'm going to give up on it unless I find a way to link the mipmaps together by tomorrow.
Would have been easy with dx8 or 9. With DX6, not really possible, unless you want to do them in software.
sNeaksieGarrett on 1/4/2008 at 01:13
Oh, sorry.:o Fixed.
@ Simplex:
Odd, thief will run in 1280x1024, but not a LOWER resolution of 1280 x 800. :confused:
I tried 1280x1024, but it made the game lag
TheNightTerror on 1/4/2008 at 01:26
Last time I checked 1280x800 was a widescreen resolution? The Dark engine doesn't support widescreen resolutions.
Simplex on 1/4/2008 at 06:09
This is understandable, but I have no idea why does thief not support standard, 4:3 resolution of 1280x960 (or also standard 1152x864, for that matter)
And yes, 1280x800 is 16:10 widescreen resolution.
